Friday Links: Looks Old, but It’s New

After so many art fairs, we feel woozy. Just like this Garfield. [Imgur]

“My guest tonight is an activist working to transform poor neighborhoods with art,” said Stephen Colbert, introducing last night’s talk show guest Theaster Gates. “Well, that explains all the chalk outlines in Chicago,” he added. [The Colbert Report]

Sydney Biennale protesters prevail! Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, the Biennale’s chairman and director of Transfield Holdings, a contractor for Australia’s network of immigration detention centers, has resigned. In addition, the Biennale has formally cut all ties to Transfield Holdings. [The Guardian]

What animals, these journalists using their cars to chase down the presumed founder of Bitcoin! [Reuters, Slate, The Internet]

Martha Schwendener visits the Independent art fair and finds “plenty of work that looks old but is actually new, and vice versa.” Nostalgia abounds. [The New York Times]

Another sparkling Baer Faxt Report this morning contains a rant about the Basquiat estate’s authentication lawsuit against Christie’s. “Might their action for $1 million, alleging copyright issues really be driven by an enormous bill the IRS is seeking from the estate??” Baer wonders. Also from Baer Faxt: Botero has left Marlborough Gallery. [Gossip]

Seriously, Josh Baer is on a roll. He notes that Sell You Later is selling a quarter of its art market algorithms to ten people for $3,500 each. They’ve already sold out, although Sell You Later’s calculations are a little murky; the “web presence” factor, for example, might put somebody like Tauba Auerbach in the “peaking” category because she’s between shows. Tellingly, the list is also made up of artists who seem to do well at the fairs. The algorithms also capture art world gender bias. [Sell You Later]

Sell You Later also got a mention in a recent New York Times assessment of the super-rich-driven contemporary art boom. As Ben Davis predicted in 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, the success of top sellers is both luring more producers and creating more stress on a middle which can’t sustainably compete. Leaving the market to so few individuals is also a dangerous trend. The Times quotes Anders Petterson, the founder of ArtTactic: “if prices rise too much, this clique could lose interest and move on to something else, and if they lose interest, a lot of other people would lose interest as well.” [The New York Times]

Media has come out with a few more delayed but in-depth Robert Ashley obits, which celebrate the composer’s role in re-imagining opera and music, in the TV age. This was true while he was alive, too, but few people seemed to celebrate his legacy, save for avid admirers like Dave Ruder, who staged an outdoor “Perfect Lives” tribute across the city in 2011. Ruder’s written a beautiful obit on how Robert Ashley changed his life. Meeting Ashley, to him, was “meeting Shakespeare or Mozart.” [obit]